Adding a new zone now, and upgrading baseboard in the future

[hiker88]

Hi everyone,

I have a home theater room in the basement I built last spring and I want to connect it to my heating system.

I'm looking for help on how to pick the space heating equipment to go with. How do you decide if you should use regular baseboard, low temp baseboard, or European style panel rads?

The room is very well insulated (I built it as a "decoupled" sound room with 2 layers of 7/8 sheet rock glued together with a noise absorbing compound . The walls and ceilings actually "float" over an insulated stud wall - the ceiling is done in the same manner). The dimensions are 15x17 by a little over 7 foot ceiling.

I used an online heat load calculator for this room, and I am coming up with 3500 btus. It's a little tough though, because this is not a typical room. For example, I am saying I have one outside wall, but in my case, there are the 2 sheets of Sheetrock, the insulated stud wall, a 6 inch air gap and then the actual outside wall which is my house and that is insulated as well... So, does 3500 btus seem possible for a room this size or should I be more pessimistic? .

Finally, I have a long term project in mind regarding upgrading the baseboard in my entire home to stretch my storage capability. Anecdotally, I can only say that I am very happy with things so far, I get by on one fire a day, even in these cold days we are having lately and keeping the house at 70f from 5 am to 8 pm. I have 820 gallons of storage that will keep the house at these temps if I don't let it get below 135. But, I want to start off "right" with this room down stairs, and then over the next couple years, upgrade around the house, using what I hope to learn here and hopefully getting to where I could let those storage temps get lower. Storage will never go below 120f because it is my dhw. I had an energy audit done and the house is rated at 38k btus. My boiler is rated at 105k btus.

Would it make sense to plan on 120f water, and install a product like this, knowing that my temps and flow will be a bit higher?
http://www.houseneeds.com/shop/manuals/smith_heatingedgebrochure.pdf
It looks like I could get 300 btu\ft at 120f and 1gpm ? So, if I did the heat calc for that room right, I would need about 12 linear feet? I'm thinking I could put in 2, 7 foot sections and be in pretty good shape?

The other option could be just to go with regular baseboard which is cheaper per linear foot, and just line 3 walls which would give me 47 linear feet, but I don't know what to estimate the btus\ft at 120f for regular baseboard. Can you have too much?

I guess this is a elegant vs brawn decision here, and I'm looking for some advice from the forum. What are your thoughts please?

 

[Bob Rohr]

Hi everyone,

I have a home theater room in the basement I built last spring and I want to connect it to my heating system.

I'm looking for help on how to pick the space heating equipment to go with. How do you decide if you should use regular baseboard, low temp baseboard, or European style panel rads?

The room is very well insulated (I built it as a "decoupled" sound room with 2 layers of 7/8 sheet rock glued together with a noise absorbing compound . The walls and ceilings actually "float" over an insulated stud wall - the ceiling is done in the same manner). The dimensions are 15x17 by a little over 7 foot ceiling.

I used an online heat load calculator for this room, and I am coming up with 3500 btus. It's a little tough though, because this is not a typical room. For example, I am saying I have one outside wall, but in my case, there are the 2 sheets of Sheetrock, the insulated stud wall, a 6 inch air gap and then the actual outside wall which is my house and that is insulated as well... So, does 3500 btus seem possible for a room this size or should I be more pessimistic? .

Finally, I have a long term project in mind regarding upgrading the baseboard in my entire home to stretch my storage capability. Anecdotally, I can only say that I am very happy with things so far, I get by on one fire a day, even in these cold days we are having lately and keeping the house at 70f from 5 am to 8 pm. I have 820 gallons of storage that will keep the house at these temps if I don't let it get below 135. But, I want to start off "right" with this room down stairs, and then over the next couple years, upgrade around the house, using what I hope to learn here and hopefully getting to where I could let those storage temps get lower. Storage will never go below 120f because it is my dhw. I had an energy audit done and the house is rated at 38k btus. My boiler is rated at 105k btus.

Would it make sense to plan on 120f water, and install a product like this, knowing that my temps and flow will be a bit higher?
http://www.houseneeds.com/shop/manuals/smith_heatingedgebrochure.pdf
It looks like I could get 300 btu\ft at 120f and 1gpm ? So, if I did the heat calc for that room right, I would need about 12 linear feet? I'm thinking I could put in 2, 7 foot sections and be in pretty good shape?

The other option could be just to go with regular baseboard which is cheaper per linear foot, and just line 3 walls which would give me 47 linear feet, but I don't know what to estimate the btus\ft at 120f for regular baseboard. Can you have too much?

I guess this is a elegant vs brawn decision here, and I'm looking for some advice from the forum. What are your thoughts please?

 

[Bob Rohr]

That load calc could be a bit high, it's under heated space i assume. Get enough folks in there and you will not need heat. The average human gives off 300- 400 BTU/hr I prefer the look and feel of radiant panels. The are easily zoned with a TRV, quick to respond, and nice to sit next to as they give off radiant heat as well as some convection. Panel rads would feel right at home with the Froling boiler.

 

[hiker88]

That load calc could be a bit high, it's under heated space i assume. Get enough folks in there and you will not need heat. The average human gives off 300- 400 BTU/hr I prefer the look and feel of radiant panels. The are easily zoned with a TRV, quick to respond, and nice to sit next to as they give off radiant heat as well as some convection. Panel rads would feel right at home with the Froling boiler.

Yes, it is under heated space. I wanted to have it heated by now, but with everything else...

The problem with the room is that it is so insulated, that once it cools down - it stays cold. Plus we keep the door closed for the harmonics so, no heat from the basement is getting in there now. It's killing me to turn on the electric space heater with the Froling sitting 20 feet away...

Do you recommend any particular product?

Thank you.

 

[BoilerMan]

As Bob pointed out it depends on the look you would like for the "high tech" room. You may be able to do a bit of calculation based on your electric heater as well, if you have a kill-a-watt meter you could set the heater to the desired temp (if it has a thermostat this will work) and measure the total wattage over a few days. At this temp and divide it out by the hours the kill-a-watt logs, convert to btus and voila, add some abount of fudge factor to the calc to be safe since it's not really a -40 design load.
Cast Iron rads if you like the look, HO baseboard so you don't have to cover three walls with it, or panel rads $$$$.

Just some food for thought.

TS

 

[Bob Rohr]

As Bob pointed out it depends on the look you would like for the "high tech" room. You may be able to do a bit of calculation based on your electric heater as well, if you have a kill-a-watt meter you could set the heater to the desired temp (if it has a thermostat this will work) and measure the total wattage over a few days. At this temp and divide it out by the hours the kill-a-watt logs, convert to btus and voila, add some abount of fudge factor to the calc to be safe since it's not really a -40 design load.
Cast Iron rads if you like the look, HO baseboard so you don't have to cover three walls with it, or panel rads $$$$.

Just some food for thought.

TS

A couple 48" panel rads would probably cover the load even at 120F supply. Here is some info on the output and a derate formula or graph from Caleffi idronics #6.

I have used the Dianorm brand, Buderus and Hydronic Alternative are a few other common brands.

 

[hiker88]

Thanks for the info so far.

Does anyone have pricing on slant fin? I'm trying to make a apples to apples comparison here. It looks like the Heating Edge and Slant fin are both rated at about 300 btu\h at 120f and 1 gpm. An 8 foot section of the Heating Edge product is $231.75 or about $29\ft.

This is an honest to goodness question here so please bear with me. I can buy an 8 foot section of regular baseboard at Lowes for $67. If you disregard things like aesthetics, why couldn't I line the front wall (15ft) the outside wall (17ft) and the back wall (call it 10 ft for the doorway). This would give me 42 feet of bb for about $300.

One of the reasons I'm considering this is because the supply run is going to have to come in the front left corner of the room, run along the front, turn 90 and run down the right hand side length which isn the outside wall . This install will have to be done above the floor due to the fact that it is in a basement. My thought is that if I have to run the supply that way, why not have it going through an emitter, and if I am going to "over build" it, why not just get the cheapest ones?

Would this be way overkill? How can I rate regular baseboard at 120f and 1 gpm to take this apples to apples comparison further?

 

[mikefrommaine]

Regular baseboard puts out about 210 btu/hr at 120 supply

http://www.slantfin.com/images/stories/Technical-Literature/ratings_fineline30_r.pdf

 

[hiker88]

Thanks!